Chris Hefley

NATIVE Tennessee tech entrepreneur Chris Hefley now co-leads Predictability at Scale LLC and is mapping a capital raise with an eye toward propelling the AI-oriented company's LLM As A Service offering through hardened-production and pilot phases, ahead of its broader market introduction.

Developers of SaaS applications can roll-out production-ready chat features accessed via LLM As A Service (hereafter LLMaaS), which employs single-line code for streaming LLM functionality from multiple vendors for an array of safe, secure functions, contributing to cost-containment, routing and load-balancing facilitated by LLMaaS's infrastructure.

The founders believe their offering is a big step forward in AI integration and enablement, Hefley told Venture Nashville.

Hefley, now 49, was co-founder of Franklin, Tenn.-based LeanKit, which sold in 2017 to Texas-based, Thoma Bravo-backed Planview for a reported $65MM (roughly 5XARR).

Troy Magennis

Bellevue, Wash.-based Troy Magennis is co-founder and 50/50 co-owner of Predictability at Scale.

The founders first connected in 2011, when they met at a tech conference in Seattle and Magennis became a consultant to LeanKit.

Hefley told VNC Predictability's capital roadmap could be multi-track at some points.

He emphasized, "We're not willing to dilly-dally... We want to go fast" and will not rule-out any solid avenue of funding.

One way or another, he aims to recruit at least $500K short-term. Beyond that, he'll seriously consider VC, private equity and-or an application to Y Combinator, the Gust Accelerator or other accelerators.

After having pilot-generated proofpoints for his platform, he said that by yearend 2025 he's likely to pursue at least $2.5MM additional early-growth capital, adding that the opportunity could call for a $5mm-$10MM raise.

That said, his immediate priority is on reconnecting with some still-active Angels from among the 106 investors who bet on LeanKit long before the company accepted venture capital and ultimately sold to Planview. He said his investor ties also run to Austin, Atlanta and elsewhere, as well as to Nashville.

Hefley volunteered that he follows efforts of comparable sector entrants, including Hamming.ai and LiteLLM, noting that the two are Y-Combinator alumni.

Today, Hefley announced via social media an open-source demo of LLMaaS in the form of Shark-Puddle.

He noted that the Shark-Puddle art (via DALL-E/ChatGPT), textual content and much of the underlying code were developed and produced using AI. Shark-Puddle is to debut on ProductHunt yet this month.

Hefley explained that LLMaaS's potential emerged from insights that he, Magennis and former LeanKit team member Tyler Welton had while discussing a precursor product, HeyCasey.io.

"CASEy Inc helps companies big and small to create, refine, adapt and deliver company and product strategy," says the parent. Currently, CASEy is deployed primarily to augment the emerging LLMaaS offering, Hefley explained.

LLMaaS's current priority customers or buying influentials are application developers, whether within enterprises or in software shops.

Predictability's advisors include attorney Chris Sloan at Baker Donelson, and execs with Bank of America.

Hefley, a native of McMinnville, Tenn., earned his computer science degree at Middle Tennessee State University (1999).

Having recently returned to the ConUS from a three-year residency in Hawaii, Hefley and family now split their time among San Diego, Portland, Nashville and other U.S. cities.

Hefley is wed to Christel Alvarez, an entrepreneur who is co-founder of Care Transformation Studio in Nashville, as well as operating her Alvarez Search. She's a Belmont University alumna.

Prior to founding LeanKit, Hefley held a range of development process architect, consulting application engineer and software-development posts at HCA, Advanced Engineering, IMI Health and Integration Management, he said.

RESOURCES: Hefley rapidly demo'd LLMaaS in video here. Hefley and Magennis engaged in extended discussion of the evolution of their current offerings during Agile 2024, with host Dave Prior. The founders often offer Twilio Inc. (NYSE:TWLO) as a company with a business model analogous to that of LLMaaS.

The parent, Predictability at Scale, was registered in Delaware in February 2023 and will soon convert to a C-corp. VNC

.last edited 1700 9 September 2024